New Drug Skin Cancer

Monday, 6 June 2011

Studies find new drug for skin cancer fight. This new research have made an extraordinary hope in the fight against skin cancer, Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, can be reduced by the use of 2 new novel drugs but can not be cured by them. But these new drugs offer patients a treatment option that goes beyond anything previously used against the skin cancer.Tests in people whose melanoma had spread show the drug was able to shrink tumors in most patients and, in a few cases, even wiped the growths out, scientists report in the Aug. 26 New England Journal of Medicine. The compound targets the protein encoded by a mutated version of the BRAF gene that underlies melanoma in roughly half of all patients.In one study, an experimental drug showed so much benefit so quickly in people with advanced disease that those getting a comparison drug were allowed to switch after just a few months.The drug, vemurafenib, targets a gene mutation found in about half of all melanomas. The drug is being developed by Genentech, part of Swiss-based Roche, and Plexxikon Inc., part of the Daiichi Sankyo Group of Japan.The second study tested Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Yervoy, a just-approved medicine for newly diagnosed melanoma patients, and found it nearly doubled the number who survived at least three years.